Startups Look to Solve Small-Biz Hiring Pain

Can online services really help with finding the right job applicant?

Image: kentoh/Shutterstock

Startups are looking to ease a huge burden for small and midsize businesses, with two new companies launched in the past couple of months aimed at streamlining the hiring process.

Unrabble, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, company founded by three veteran entrepreneurs, promises to cut down the process of sifting through résumés by using Web-based software. The company launched last month at the VentureBeat DEMO event, after beta testing since March.

“We really wanted solve a problem all of us had experienced,” said Chris Rickborn, chief operating officer and cofounder of Unrabble. He and his partners, Kevin Watson and Mark Slack, had previously led identity-verification software company Verid, which they sold to EMC in 2007. And, said Rickborn, one of the problems the trio shared was in the time spent reading résumés and trying to make sure they hired the right person.

Their software is meant to make that search less painful, by allowing potential employers to quickly sort applicant profiles submitted on the Web to find the best matches and to communicate with favored applicants via private chat.

Rickborn said that since the company launched three weeks ago, it doesn’t have any revenue to speak of. But Unrabble has raised $3.5 million from C/max Capital and Morgenthau Ventures. Watson, Unrabble's chief executive officer, is also a cofounder of C/max Capital.

While Unrabble is trying to reduce the time spent on reviewing résumés, Danielle Weinblatt’s new company, Take the Interview, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is using the Web to slash the time spent interviewing people by screening them with questions over Web video.

Like Unrabble, Take the Interview is all about making it easier to pick the right person for a job, Weinblatt said.

After going through the Dreamit Ventures accelerator this summer, Take the Interview has landed $785,000 in funding from Dreamit partners and angel investors. That’s not one of the huge funding rounds you hear a lot about, but it’s enough for Weinblatt to pay her team of six employees, market her company, and develop a mobile application.

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